Dublin freesheets to merge - Metro and Herald AM

edanto

Seems like this is a victory for Metro, given that the owners of Metro will own 2/3 of the new entity, cleverly named 'Metro Herald'.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0702/breaking33.htm

I was just reading both the other day, side by side, thinking how similar they were. Both led with the same story (lawn mower - airport) and had the same picture on the front page (U2 @ Barcelona) and the same selection of stories inside.

Current advertising market probably couldn't sustain 2 of them. It's a pity about the inevitable layoffs, but is this a good thing or a bad thing for quality journalism?

dcr22B

TBH, I'll be glad to see the back of Herald AM as it has an inferior design and from a personal point of view, their GAA coverage is poor to say the least.

Run_to_da_hills

Hopefully this will cut down on rubbish left after readers discard these papers after them, on the down side it staff will be layed off on the destributing end.

Gekko

I was thinking a merger might be due but I was on a different tangent - this one was more obvious.

deisebabe

Its a good thing. The heraldam and metro mainly have the same stories.

I'll be glad to see the back of Herald AM as it has an inferior design and from a personal point of view, their GAA coverage is poor to say the least.

+1

IRE60

All a little strange really – there is a ready market out there for 145,000 papers every morning as seen by the combined distribution levels of the current titles.

The intended distribution figure for (the stunningly imaginatively titled) Metro Herald is 70,000!

Aside from the journalists/production staff there will be about 100 ‘layoffs’ on the distributors side as well.

shepthedog

A city of Dublin's size was never going to sustain two free sheets... They were just cutting into each other.. At least one properly produced and distributed might be able to sustain itself by becoming economically viable.

loyatemu

IRE60 wrote: »

All a little strange really – there is a ready market out there for 145,000 papers every morning as seen by the combined distribution levels of the current titles.

from my observation most people take both of them, so its 70000 people taking 2 papers each.

They both generally have exactly the same generic newswire stories and press releases. Metro is better largely because it has half-decent reviews and that troll-tastic letters page - hopefully all they will keep from the Herald is the name.

Ironically, INM originally wanted to call their freesheet "Herald Metro" and Metro took them to court over it. Now the combined paper is going to be called "Metro Herald"

IRE60

Actually, most people avoided taking one! And you choice of paper on a given morning normally depended on which side of a particular street you walked on - literally. There is a ready market for 150,000 papers, easily. 70k is simply down to economics

Pen1987

I think they only employ about 6 journalists between them (Herald had no by-lines, Metro only had two). Hopefully all will be kept on and they can drop a few wire stories and improve coverage.

Time Magazine

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